![]() ![]() Reference-management tools, also called citation managers, perform a handful of related functions: searching the literature storing and organizing PDFs of papers and supplementary materials generating bibliographies and fostering collaboration. That’s because it dovetails nicely with his team’s workflow. Goldacre, who is also director of the DataLab at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, UK, explains: “Paperpile is the first time I’ve used a reference manager where it didn’t make me want to punch myself in the face on a regular basis out of sheer rage. Physician Ben Goldacre, for instance, has tweeted at least five times about Paperpile, a subscription-based reference manager that integrates tightly with Google Docs, calling it “amazing”, “fantastic, best ever”, and “unbeLIEVably good”. Support for the desktop version of Papers 3, my erstwhile reference management software of choice, was discontinued and sales ceased last November.For such utilitarian tools, reference management software can inspire strong reactions. I have been using some version of Papers on the Mac and iOS for over seven years now, and I have really enjoyed using it on both platforms. The Papers app on iOS was especially useful, with its selective Dropbox-sync and night-reading features. Over the years however, there were many growing annoyances. The lack of significant updates was frustrating, and even when updates were offered, they were largely unable to keep up with operating system advances. Ever since Papers was bought over by ReadCube, I have been worried about the future direction of the software as well as the long-term durability of my reference management system. ![]() Why a reference manager?Ĭonsidering the aforementioned problem, a fleeting thought I had was to archive/delete all of my 5000+ PDFs, save a BibTeX file, and give in to the constant connectivity of the attention-economy era: download PDFs from their source whenever I needed it. However, unlike what Spotify does for music (for me), after some thought, I realized that this approach would become troublesome when I’m in the field (>month downtime with no internet, etc.) or traveling. Furthermore, retrieving some hard-to-get PDFs or scans of papers I already would’ve been challenging. How about simply keeping PDFs somewhere on my iCloud with a fixed naming convention and separately update a BibTeX file with reference information taken from Scholar? I knew I didn’t have to start from scratch because Papers 3 could generate one giant text file with all my references in BibTeX format. This approach was also not entirely appealing. I knew that such a strategy could become unwieldy real quick for an ever-increasing number of papers, especially if I wanted to go inside and edit some references along the way (something that always happens). Also, it would’ve been painful to generate a revised. bib file with a sub-selection of citations for particular projects. Finally, if I ever wanted to use Word or another WYSIWYG editor, citation management would’ve become… a chore. Light, powerful, and not prone to crashing.What would my ideal reference manager look like? #Export readcube papers softwareĬonsidering today’s technological umbrella, I don’t think asking for a half-decent reference management software is a tall ask.
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